


you're in a car with a beautiful boy

by akelabaybeee



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: :), First Kiss, M/M, One Shot, i love these soft soft boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24878458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akelabaybeee/pseuds/akelabaybeee
Summary: He knows Ian. He knows Ian and he wishes that didn’t have to mean he loves him, but it does. He doesn’t understand how anyone could know Ian and not love him. But he’s not quite ready to admit that yet, least of all to himself.
Relationships: Ian Gallagher & Mickey Milkovich, Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Comments: 1
Kudos: 98





	you're in a car with a beautiful boy

**Author's Note:**

> posted first on my tumblr, elena-fishy. a recounting of the boys' first kiss :) title is from part 24 of richard siken's poem "you are jeff". would highly recommend reading that part before reading this, for a m b i a n c e ...
> 
> enjoy!!

The day Ian Gallagher shows up at his door, red-cheeked, out of breath, and wanting, no — _“I need to see you”_ — needing him, Mickey knows he’s done for.

What comes out is: “I thought you were working today.”

 _Nice, dumbshit, that’s helpful,_ he registers the thought somewhere in the back of his mind, but mostly he just can’t stop staring at Ian. His eyes flick over his face, and he doesn’t have time to be shocked by how much he _cares._

He’s embarrassed to reveal that _yes,_ he _did_ memorize Ian’s work schedule because he _was_ in fact listening to the guy when he was busy running his mouth at the convenience store. Instinctively, he casts a quick glance over his shoulder. He can’t let Terry see this gay shit, Ian all worked up about some mommy issues and Mickey trying in his own way. To do what exactly, he’s still not completely sure. Comfort him, maybe? He doubts his father would clue in, his head’s too far up his homophobic ass for that, but like hell Mickey’s gonna risk it. Nothing’s gonna touch Ian. Fucking _ever,_ if it’s up to him.

“I’ll meet you there in twenty,” Mickey says a short while later. He closes the door and goes back inside to stand around the dining table where Terry was going over some kind of raid or bust or heist while somehow managing to boss Mandy around every other word.

Mickey can’t focus on anything. He’s going to see Ian in twenty minutes. He’s bubbling with palpable excitement and fear and feelings he has no name for. What if Ian wants to talk about everything? Does he smell bad? What could Mickey say so he doesn’t leave? So Ian doesn’t see what a miserable shit he is? He hates Ian _fucking_ Gallagher for making him care about dumb stuff like this, for making him incapable of hearing a word his Dad is saying to him and his brothers, for making him want to do some astronomically stupid thing like _kiss_ him.

“Mickey, why you over there starin’ like some dumb fuckin’ fag?”

He doesn’t work up the courage for over another year.

Mickey slams the door to his room after running errands with Iggy all morning. It smells stale and one of the posters is curling off the wall in the mid-summer humidity. He’d changed his sheets this morning. The same red ones from the day Ian had burst in here like a maniac demanding the gun back. From then on, the two had been inseparable; no matter how hard their South Side circumstances had tried to pry them apart, every time they came back together like magnets.

Mickey knows he can’t really hide from Ian, and it scares him as much as it excites him. Ian reads him like no one ever has. The guy even had the nerve to smile that adorable smile that makes Mickey’s chest tight when he’d told him he’d rip his tongue out back in juvie. For some reason that Mickey cannot begin to fathom, Ian seems to want to spend time with him. Seems to _believe_ in him.

He had thought himself perfectly fine to live a life half-awake, to spend his days either in prison or in the Milkovich household (one in the same, he thinks - except that juvie doesn’t have Terry), probably die by shivs or bullets or fists, and have his body buried in some unmarked grave all before his 50th birthday. Ian had wedged his place in the timeline of Mickey’s life. There was a _before,_ and an _after,_ and neither of them would ever be the same. Mickey pretends that it's not this thought that keeps him up at night.

As soon as he realized that Iggy and Colin and Terry looked at girls and _actually_ wanted them, that it wasn’t _just_ some bizarre social act they all bought into, he knew he was fucked for life. His whole existence feels like some grand joke that everyone is in on but him, and when he lays down at night and stares at his ceiling and thinks about Ian Gallagher, Ian Gallagher, _Ian Gallagher,_ he wonders if maybe he was the butt of it all along.  
Ian Gallagher, who knew him and wanted him anyway, who took the time to care about him, who sought him out to spend _time_ with him just because he _wanted_ to. When had their ten minute fucks turned into smoke breaks? When had their smoke breaks turned into —

Mickey’s phone _dings_ in his pocket as he sits on the steps of the Milkovich house, a cigarette dangling idly from his mouth.

\---  
**Ian**  
what are ur plans today  
\---

He swallows his heart back down as it leaps into his throat, almost dizzying him with excitement. _Get a grip, you fuckin’ girl._ He’d done all that he needed to do for the day. He’d helped Iggy with some errands in the morning and had planned on laying low, playing Halo 3, and chain-smoking his way through a pack until dinner.

He chews on his lip as he considers what to say. He texts back:

\---  
**Mickey**  
don’t have any  
\---

He wants to say “why, what’s up?”, he wants to say “let’s go to the dugouts”, he wants to say “let’s do something”, “let’s hang out”, “i want to see you”, “i want you”. But he’s not allowed to want things. Certainly not… _this._ Whatever _this_ is. He receives a response almost immediately and can’t help but crack a fond smile. Someone’s eager.

\---  
**Ian**  
come with me to that abandoned building near the L  
you know the spot  
\---

That’s how Mickey finds himself sitting atop a wooden platform, watching Ian run military drills below at 1 in the afternoon on a Sunday. He fires his gun into the sky while resolutely pretending not to be checking out the younger boy below.

“Hey,” Ian says, breathing heavily and squinting against the sun and Mickey finds himself realizing he is made of things he cannot ever have, “You know that guy you beat the shit out of at that club?”  
Of course Mickey remembers. His stomach flops at the mention of him.  
“He wants me to sneak into his mansion and take all of his crap.”  
“Really,” Mickey responds dryly, firing off another shot. He doesn’t want Ian to keep talking about him, “Hi-larious.”  
“Can’t get it himself,” Ian continues, as if Mickey cares. And the worst part is that he thinks maybe he _does_ — he cares about everything this alien-looking ginger has to say and he hates it and he can never, ever get enough of it, of him, of Ian, “Divorce. Says I can take whatever I want. He’s loaded. You want in?”

Mickey fires shots at the ground by Ian’s head where he’s crawling under some boards. He’s remembering seeing them at that bar in Boystown, out in the heat and in the sun and in _public,_ cracking jokes and living a life Mickey can only watch from behind glass, from behind bars. _Fuck_ that old guy for getting handed on a silver platter what Mickey so desperately craves but cannot have. Not just Ian — freedom. Though Mickey thinks they’re one and the same these days.

“Jesus! Use blanks, maybe?! Fuck.” Ian shouts up at him, dragging himself up off the ground.  
“Bring my cousins?” Mickey asks, refusing to look at him. Every time he does he sees them together and wishes that it had been him, sun-drunk and laughing and _free_ by his side.  
“Yeah,” Ian shrugs.  
“‘Aight, I’m in,” Mickey fires off another shot. 

He’s angry at Ian for nothing other than exercising his complete right to see other people since they weren’t really _together_ anyway, he’s angry at that old ass man for being able to go out for drinks with him, touch him, kiss him, and most of all he’s angry at _himself._  
He feels broken for wanting him. He feels broken for not being able to be brave enough to admit that he wants him. He gets cut on his own self-hatred any direction he turns.

“I dunno what you see in that geriatric viagroid,” he says, forcing himself to meet Ian’s gaze, if for a brief moment.  
“He buys me stuff, orders me room service,” Ian says nonchalantly, looking up at Mickey. It’s obvious how much he’s been working out. His shoulders are hard and defined, his chest chiseled through the dark green of his military shirt. Mickey feels the familiar sting of contempt rising in his throat and fires off two more shots.

He can’t _buy_ him anything, let alone _room service._ The fuck kind of response is that? More than anything, it annoys Mickey because he knows it isn’t really true. He’s bullshitting him, and that gets to him more than Ted or Ned or Fred or whatever the hell is name is ever could. He knows he’s not that superficial. Sure, he doesn’t doubt those are nice bonuses, but he knows there’s more to it than that.

He knows Ian. He _knows_ Ian and he wishes that didn’t have to mean he loves him, but it does. He doesn’t understand how anyone could know Ian and not love him. But he’s not quite ready to admit that yet, least of all to himself.

“He isn’t afraid to kiss me,” Ian adds.

Ah. There it is.

His world has become a breathing thing with Ian in it. Before it was stagnant, stale, drowning. It has become a beast with teeth that threatens to tear him from the careful scaffolding he has built around the most fragile parts of his life.

If he kisses him, then everything he fears he is will be true.

_Some dumb fuckin’ fag._

So Mickey brings his cousins later that evening and doesn’t stop thinking about Ian’s comment for the rest of the day. The van ride is full of loud music and rolled down windows that let in the warm, fresh summer air, and Iggy and Colin are endlessly bickering and hitting each other in the back of the car.

“Can you assholes quiet down when we get closer? You’re gonna wake up the old lady and everyone else in the goddamn neighbourhood before we even roll in the fuckin’ driveway,” Mickey says, swatting at them from where he’s sitting in the passenger seat. Ian glances his way with an amused smile that Mickey only just catches when he settles back. He grins in return around the cigarette dangling from his mouth.

“Oh hey, pass one?” Ian asks, holding out his hand. Mickey’s about to give him one before a car speeds around a corner and almost T-bones the side of the van. Ian’s hand snaps back to the wheel to swerve out of the way, and Mickey drops the cigarette to the floor of the van in all the commotion.

“Asshole, watch it!” Ian exclaims as he uselessly flips off the car that’s now long gone down the road. Mickey lets out a guffaw of a laugh and abandons handing him the lost cigarette in favour of placing his own half-smoked one right between Ian’s lips.

The intimacy of the action doesn’t strike him until he’s nudging the cigarette against his mouth and his eyes are tracing the outline of his lips and he can feel the warmth of his breath against his tattooed knuckles. The raw familiarity of the action and the fact that Mickey’s own lips had just been on the cigarette that’s now resting on the edge of Ian’s mouth has his heart racing so quickly he can feel it in his chest like a ton of bricks. Ian casts him a side-glance out of the corner of his eye as he parts his lips to accept it. 

Mickey takes his hand away and clears his throat, glancing at the rear-view mirror to an oblivious Colin and Iggy.

“Thanks,” Ian mumbles, remembering himself as he snaps out of whatever it had been that passed between them just now.

Mickey wants to kiss him. He really, really wants to kiss him. He’d tried fucking girls and had been less turned on than he was just now doing nothing other than placing his cigarette in Ian’s mouth.  
Ian pulls into the drive minutes later, cigarette since burned through and discarded out the window. Mickey tries not to feel the absence of it as though it were his own lips against his and not just the ghost of them stained onto the cigarette.

Colin drags open the side door and hops out with Iggy, zipping open a duffel bag full of guns. Mickey’s grateful for the distraction, for the absolute focus violence requires that he hopes will shove his desire to do something as stupid as _kiss Ian_ out of his head.

“Hey! Whoa, guys, guys! No fucking guns, alright? It’s just a drunk old lady in there,” Ian says, brow furrowed as he looks at Mickey.

Trust Gallagher to be the defender of drunk old ladies. Mickey bites at his lip, trying and failing to ignore the way his chest swells with adoration at Ian’s request. Soft motherfucker. He’s right, though — any unnecessary violence and this could be a way bigger deal than it needs to be. Plus, he’d rather not piss off his only and best friend. He grabs the guns back from his cousins, much to their disappointment, and takes off toward the house.

He hadn’t woken up this morning thinking that today would be the day he’d kiss Ian. Hell, even now he’s sure that if he thinks about it any more he’ll chicken out and never kiss him at all. Mickey Milkovich, with the F-U-C-K U-U-P knuckles, who wears dirt and a scowl like they’re permanent accessories, is going to kiss Ian Gallagher, the freckled boy who protects drunk old ladies and smiles at him like he hangs the damn stars. He figures he was about to storm into an old lady’s house brandishing firearms without second thought or fright. Is kissing someone really that much more terrifying?

_Abso-fuckin-lutely._

But there’s nothing between them but the van and Mickey’s fear. And fuck the fear. Fuck it. 

He can pretend that he kisses him for no other reason than to prove a point, than to fulfil some implied dare. 

At the end of the day, he kisses him because he wants to. 

He kisses him because he likes him. 

He kisses him because he loves him.

Mickey’s heart is racing so badly he feels that he might throw up and well, what an impression that would leave. Every part of him is shaking as he turns and takes one step, two steps, pulls himself into the van and…

His lips are against Ian’s. They’re so much _softer_ than he’d imagined (and he had imagined, often) and warm and Mickey can feel the breath from his nose against his own face. He tastes like smoke and freedom and something sweet Mickey can’t place – _a fucking Snickers bar?_ – but loves the taste of anyway.

His brain short-circuits. He lingers longer than he had intended to, but it’s _real_ and it’s _better_ than he ever thought it could be. He’d kissed Sarah Perkins on a dare back in 7th grade and he’d gargled vodka afterwards to wash his mouth out.

He’d thought himself broken for it just not feeling _right._ But this… _this_ feels right. _Ian_ makes him feel right. He had expected, _hoped_ even maybe, that it would feel wrong. That he would kiss him and feel as though he had done something terrible, something worse than stealing from an old lady’s home, but if it does he can’t bring himself to care at the moment.

On his tongue, in his touch, with his laugh, Ian has given him the vocabulary to understand himself. To put a name to feelings mostly only understood in the illuminating glory of hindsight.

He’s spent his whole life outside of himself. Is _this_ what it is to know yourself? Is _this_ what it is for everything to suddenly make sense? He isn’t allowed soft things. He isn’t allowed _this._

But here he is anyway.

And the world spins on.

He wants to kiss him again and again and again but he remembers his cousins in the house and what he suspects was probably less than five seconds feels like an eternity and Ian’s lips are starting to respond and move and _is that his hand starting to lift to touch him? oh shit what if they come back to get him and this is what they walk in on and –_

He pulls back and retreats as quickly as he’d arrived, throwing up a middle finger at Ian. Afraid to kiss him, Mickey’s ass.

 _Fuck_ he thinks as he runs back to the house, and can’t think much else but _fuckfuckfuck,_ every inch of him charged and shaking and electric.

“Forgot somethin’,” he says breathlessly to the two boys who are, as it turns out, barely paying him any mind as they bicker between themselves about how they’re going to manage picking up a cabinet heavier than the two of them combined. Mickey’s not listening to them as they end up dropping it to split up and tackle smaller bait.

He grins wickedly to himself. He _did it._ Mickey goddamn Milkovich made a choice that wasn’t about pain or hurt or violence. He’d made a choice that was his and his alone and it was _soft._ Mickey Milkovich could choose to be soft, and gentle, and maybe even caring.

And if he can kiss Ian Gallagher? He can do anything.


End file.
